Help me build a pc

[Armybuilder]

So ye. I need a new pc. However ive got no idea at all.

Like none.

So Help please

Its gotta be able to game. But not to a stupid level

Any help would be much appreciated

[PineappleTom]

I would recommend having a monitor. I find mine very useful.

[Mark]

Mouses are always good

[BeeBee]

keyboard too

[Armybuilder]

Bad men

[JC]

I guess I'll be the first to give some genuine advice, even if it is a little overdue

I'll suggest two setups, one intel, one AMD but there will be some parts that you'll need regardless of which option you choose:

Case - Fractal Design R3
Both Myself and Orthux have this case and we've both been impressed, you can get it in white or silver as well

Power Supply - Corsair CX 500W

Hard Drive - Samsung Spinpoint F3

Total ~£180

GPU Options:

MSI 6870 'Hawk' £150

EVGA GTX 560Ti £175

Intel Motherboard/CPU

CPU & Motherboard Combo - Asus P8P67 and Intel i5 2500K

£289

AMD Motherboard/CPU

Motherboard: Gigabyte 970A-UD3

CPU: AMD Phenom II 965

£184

Just a couple of notes:

• The Intel CPU is much more powerful, however most people won't use it so the AMD CPU is probably sufficient
• If you go for an AMD CPU/Motherboard make sure you get a 900-series chipset as these *should* be compatible with the Bulldozer chips that are coming out 'soon'

I seem to recall you had about a £500 budget? if so go for the AMD CPU/Motherboard and the 6870 Hawk, that should work out at a little over budget but it'll give you great performance for the money.

If you can stretch you money a little more, get the 560Ti which should end up costing you ~£550

If you really want a great CPU, go for the Intel option

Probably some shit I've forgotten but yeah, I didn't include peripherals such as screens/keyboards/mice as they're things that often depend on the person

[Mark]

Fucking JC

[Da Kno]

.

[JC]

Isn't there alot more powerful components out there nowerdays? i may be wrong but i've heard of like 8 cpu systems, 6gb+ ram, 8gb g-cards etc

I was working to a budget as I mentioned in my post

Yes there are 8-core chips, but they're not very impressive.

Yes you can get alot more than 6gb of RAM, but there is very few situations that you'd need any more than 4.... you certainly wouldn't need more than 4 for gaming.

No there is no graphics cards with 8 Gb of RAM, the highest I can think of at the moment is the ATI 6990 series (4Gb of RAM) and nVidia GTX 590 (3Gb of RAM)...

But anyway overall it's not really a good idea to look at a part and say "More cores = Better" or "More RAM = Better" because that really isn't the case in the real world, in the current situation a 4-core Intel CPU is roughly equal in performance to the recently released AMD 8-core.  Some things look really impressive on a Spec sheet for a new computer (such as 16 Gb's of RAM) but it really turns out the performance benefits are minimal for gaming and you pay alot more for it.

[Da Kno]

.

[JC]

Ahaha, thanks alot JC

I never realised thought to look at it like that tbh

Next time i go Pc shopping might use this thread

Always happy to help, if you're looking at building a PC just post up a list & I'll happily give feedback

[Armybuilder]

Starting to write things up looking up. I cant start getting parts until Christmas... so this is gonna be a slow process

[RobbieThe1st]

Just remember that for Runescape core count doesn't matter. RS only uses /one/ core, no matter how many you have. So, you need the fastest single core you can - A 3.2ghz C2D is going to be better than a 2.0ghz I5 or w/e, simply because each core is faster.

[JC]

Just remember that for Runescape core count doesn't matter. RS only uses /one/ core, no matter how many you have. So, you need the fastest single core you can - A 3.2ghz C2D is going to be better than a 2.0ghz I5 or w/e, simply because each core is faster.

Yup, I totally agree (though you can't actually buy a current gen desktop i5 that is that slow and the Sandy Bridge architecture is so efficient that there wouldn't be that much difference between a 3.2 C2D and a 2.0 Ghz Sandy Bridge i5).

I think though that Tom is trying to build this PC in preparation for Bioshock Infinite, which being a game that will be released sometime in 2012(?) I'm sure it will have multi-core support.  I also believe that Jagex has stated previously that Runescape does have the ability to support multiple cores when they enable it, so sometime in the future we're quite likely to see RS running on multiple cores (I would guess once they've done a major graphics upgrade).

[Mark]

I have an I5 Sandy Bridge [email protected]

[Armybuilder]

FFs dont know where you  sdid maths but your basic addition is poor JC +p
£600+ Is not fun...
In addition damn graphics cards are no longer on the site

[JC]

FFs dont know where you  sdid maths but your basic addition is poor JC +p
£600+ Is not fun...
In addition damn graphics cards are no longer on the site

I can see where I went wrong, I forgot to include the case in the totals

Graphics cards, rough equivalents:

GTX 560 Ti - £160

HD 6870 - £150

If you want to save a bit more you could go for this card, not as much performance as a 6870 but they're still fine (considering the prices, I'd take the 560Ti myself, but I think if it was down to the 6850 or 6870 I'd keep the £30 and go for the 6850):

HD 6850 - £120

Other changes you could make now, since the Bulldozer has turned out to be an almighty 'meh' (This is the current 'best bulldozer' vs. the chip below, the bulldozer chip is a little over twice the price) I wouldn't even bother planning to upgrade to one in the future, you could change to this for AMD:

AMD 880 Motherboard - £65

AMD 955BE CPU - Quad Core 3.20Ghz - £100

Saving another £20 over the original price, the CPU costs have gone up.

I'd need to double check everything again really, because looking at it a lot of prices have changed (Price of the original CPU has gone up etc).  To be fair there is a point where it's worth just waiting a bit longer and saving up more, I think £550 is about that 'sweet point' at the moment.

Decreasing the CPU/Graphics/Hard Drive any further are likely to see significant performance decreases (you'd have to go to a tri-core/Athlon to save any significant amount on the CPU, halving your HDD space saves you £20 lol) and really anything under the 6850/6870 is going to struggle with newer games.

Oh and lol, only just noticed I didn't include ram in the list above

2 x 2Gb Corsair XMS 3 - £23

Same RAM I have, it's not fancy but it is cheap and it's fine.  Corsair also have a lifetime warranty which I've used repeatedly and they're really good to deal with.

[Armybuilder]

Basically its gonna be a slow process. Start at christmas, save, feburary = birthday = more cash

So ye ive got time +)

Thanks man.
Im literally clueless rofl. Was looking at some of the scan ones. I know not to buy a prebuilt one but its still nice to look +P

Ill always go for the high graphics card. Its always gonne be better in the long run lol.

[Jammie415]

You can get a ati readon hd 6770 for I think 80 pounds off ebuyer.com, I think thats a better deal then the gpus you have in the op.